Ok so I plugged a monitor into my HP Laptop cause the screen is really cracked, everything worked fine, then it warned me that something might be wrong with the hard drive and that I should back it up, while I was transferring as much off as I could it crashed, now it's going into recovery mode I think but nothing will display on the monitor I hooked up to it even using an HDMI to my tv won't show what's going on, I can see a small square on the laptop screen around the blackness from the cracks n it goes blue eventually like its about to boot up Windows 7 n I see the word recovery, I want to know if there's some way that I can project the image on the secondary monitor immediately when I turn it on so I can access the bios to boot up Ubuntu from a USB cause that tiny window on the laptop screen isn't enough for me to see what's going on, I've had another HP laptop's HD die the same way but it was worse it would just go to a black screen n no way to save it so I booted from Ubuntu to try n save anything I could but on the other laptop the screen was intact which made it easier, n the HD on this computer isn't making any clicking noises which is a good sign I might b able to salvage wtv I can, please somebody help, thanks for your time.

Mo

Hi...

Yes, there is but it will involve having to perform some disassembly on your laptop. You will need to disconnect any and all cables going from the motherboard to the screen so the system will not be able to see it (and recognize your external monitor as the only available monitor.) Remove the broken screen from the rest of the unit and lay it aside. You can see pictures of the cables here. Then you can plug in your VGA cable to the laptop and (after switching it on,) you should see the BIOS screen at that point.

Regards...